12 Hours of Sebring Report: Gradient Racing Tough it out for Valuable Points
‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ goes the age-old proverb. It very much felt like the opposite were true for Gradient Racing during a grueling and often tormenting 12 Hours of Sebring on Saturday.
Drivers Sheena Monk, Katherine Legge and Marc Miller knew they had a fast race car in the shape of the #66 JG Wentworth HPD Acura NSX GT3 Evo 22, and after their heroics (with Mario Farnbacher) at the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona, hopes were high of another podium challenge at the 12 Hours of Sebring.
Motor racing, however, is rarely that simple.
With 51 other cars starting North America’s longest-running endurance race – remember that word ‘endurance’ – there’s a potential incident at every one of the 17 corners on every one of the 318 laps of the gruelling concrete Florida venue. So gruelling, in fact, it even uses #respectthebumps as its corporate hashtag.
When those clouds come looking for you – as it did for the crew of #66 in the third and seventh hours, putting paid to any hopes of a strong result – it can be pretty hard to take.
“All you can do is get your head down, forget about it and try to pick up whatever points you can when something like that happens,” said Katherine after jumping out of the car in the middle portion of the race..
“We saw at Daytona [when three laps were made up in the final three hours thanks to full-course cautions and the GTD class podium was missed by less than seconds] that anything can happen if you just stay focused.”
But just how do you ‘stay focused’ when you’re physically and mentally exhausted after three days of build-up, and when every silver lining shows its clouds?
First; an explanation of how said clouds rolled in.
The moment that changed the race for the #66 Gradient Racing JG Wentworth Acura NSX GT3 Evo22
A strong performance from Sheena, taking part in her first-ever GT3 qualifying session, led to the NSX GT3 Evo 22 getting underway from 17th on the GTD grid, and the Pennsylvania native did extremely well to hold her nerve as a spinning prototype sent the pack scattering in all directions at Turn 1.
An excellent double stint ensured that Marc took over at the two-hour mark in 12th and quickly rose to 10th; the Holland, MI, racer part of nose-to-tail battle for sixth spot. All silver lining so far.
It was then – at quarter-distance – that the sparkle turned grey. Marc stayed wide through Turn 16 to let a car from the leading GTP class lap him, but was then squeezed off the track with an almighty thump that not only ripped off the right-front portion of the bodywork, but also the light pod and a section of the floor.
Marc talks through the incident with Steve Byrnes of NBC Sports
While he was able to keep going, this was the key damage that was to cost any hope of a podium.
“It’s the angriest I’ve been for a long time at a race,” said Marc afterwards. “It was just so unnecessary. You always try to give the prototype drivers racing room, but sometimes once they get alongside they just assume you’re not there any more.
“It ripped the right-front of the car off and with the dive planes and the splitter missing, that was an easy two seconds a lap for every single lap for the next nine hours. Sebring has so many high-speed turns that the aero loss is very significant.”
Despite a longer-than-planned next pitstop that dropped Marc a lap down as the crew investigated the damage and made minor repairs, clever strategy from Team Manager Andris Laivins and the car engineers allowed #66 to cycle back onto the lead lap before half-distance.
Photo Courtesy of Jon Bennett Photography
Further contact caused damage to the left side of the NSX that left it with no working rear lights and only one at the front, leading to an instruction from IMSA to pit to have external lighting (think hand-held torches, only far brighter) elements fitted to the car by an ultra high-tech solution, the good old cable tie.
Added to this was a bungee cord holding the rear bodywork together and the true spirit of that word we mentioned earlier, endurance, comes to, erm, light.
The most mentally-exhausting element of this extra pitstop – deemed necessary before the sun set for the final few hours – was that it came just moments after Katherine had climbed aboard in the ninth hour and passed two cars on a green-flag restart to move into ninth – the highest the car had been (bar pit cycles) all race.
The stop put Katherine three laps behind with four hours to go. Not withstanding the extraordinary way Daytona ended, that was that as far as results were concerned, especially as #66 was not given a single wave-by despite the process being enacted several times.
“It’s pretty tough,” said Sheena, who completed nearly four hours behind the wheel just before the ‘repair’ pitstop. “At this point we’re not fighting for much other than to score as many championship points as we can, because it’s a long season.
“Sure the damage lost us speed, but because I’m used to racing GT4 cars with quite a small amount of downforce, the feeling was actually quite familiar and I didn’t need to adjust my style so much.
“It’s just a shame for the whole team, who have worked so hard this week and in the test [two weeks prior] to give us a fast, consistent race car, and for JG Wentworth and all our sponsors who are here supporting us.”
The hard work of the drivers and crew was good enough for P12 and 7th in the GTD Standings.
Our day will come though, when – rather like last year’s Petit Le Mans – where the #66 Acura triumphed from the back of the grid, the clouds will turn silver themselves.